Brent Bozell: Media Refuses to Cover Easter as Religious Holiday

Media outlets are largely ignoring the religious side of holidays such as Easter and Christmas, says Media Research Center President Brent Bozell.

Bozell's organization looked at media coverage of Easter over the three-year period and found that 89 percent of stories dealt with the secular side of holiday, including Easter egg hunts.

"Only 50 out of almost 560 stories dealt with Easter as a religious holiday," Bozell said Thursday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File."

Bozell said that those stories are legitimate, because there are secular aspects to religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas. But he said the primary purpose of those holidays is religious, and the media are being irresponsible by not reporting them as such.

MRC also looked at media stories on Christmas over a two-year period. Only 1.3 percent of stories mentioned God, Bozell said.

"It is the birth of Christ; it is not a shopping day," he said.

Bozell noted that Memorial Day and Independence Day are secular holidays, and even though people may go to church on Memorial Day to remember the fallen, that doesn't make it a religious holiday.

In the same vein, he said, secular activities on religious holidays don't make them secular.
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